


Choosin' Blindness When You Got Eyes to See

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Series: Several General Danvers AUs in Tiny Hors D'oeuvre Form [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Music, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 18:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Blues musician AU.  Alex as the young hotshot and Astra as the legend who's already seen it all. If this were longer there would be sex but as I'm trying to do all of these in tiny hors d'oeuvre form, it's implied.  ;)





	Choosin' Blindness When You Got Eyes to See

Alex “Kryptonite” Danvers knew how to bring down a house. Just herself, no band, no backup singers. Just her guitar and her metal slide and a couple of looping pedals. She’d bang on the guitar and beat out rhythms and then build on top of them and by the time she was done she’d have a room full of drunks clapping and shouting along with her, losing their goddamn minds over the blistering riffs and gut-bucket rhythms. 

Tonight was no different as she stalked from the stage, dripping sweat, suit jacket long since doffed in a heap onstage and white button down shirt undone three buttons, black necktie loosened till the knot sat halfway down her chest.

She was young. She was flashy. She was sexier than spring blossoms dripping honey.

“Not a bad little act you got there,” Astra said to her as she passed.

Kryptonite Danvers looked at her with dark eyes, grinning, and leaned in so Astra smelled her bourbon breath. “Well, I guess they call you Slow Hand for a reason.” She winked, and continued walking toward the backstage area, where her dressing table had a half-emptied bottle of Old Crow.

Astra went by the name Tupelo Star, having picked up those guitar skills and the years of hard living that came with them on the blues circuit in Mississippi. But folks who’d followed her a while often used the nickname Slow Hand, because she wasn’t flashy, but made every note ache, and she always picked the bluest ones. “They do,” Astra answered, “why don’t you stick around and see why. If you can drink and listen at the same time, that is.”

And then she slung her blue Fender Stratocaster over her shoulder, and walked out to a crowd already wound up from the previous set.

 

 

******

 

Alex never could resist a challenge, and the one issued by Tupelo Star was no exception.She set her guitar down in a stand and wandered back into the wings with a full glass of Crow. Its rich honey color caught the stage lights as she watched the woman who was damn near a legend show the room exactly why that was so.

“Is everyone feeling bad?” Star asked the audience, grinning.

They laughed and applauded.

“Good,” she said with approval. She was easy with them, so easy, like she was best friends with every last one of them.“It’s alright to feel bad,” she went on, “right? We love the blues because it’s all about what’s beautiful about feeling bad.”

And then Alex watched her open up the audience.She didn’t play fast. She didn’t jump around and bang on the guitar. She played melodies that wound their fingers around your gut. The blue note, in technical terms, was at a specific place in the scale, that place where you expected a sweet major but you got the dark minor instead. When Tupelo Star was playing, every note was blue no matter where it was. Her tone was enviable for its simplicity; just a perfectly built guitar, playing through a perfectly weathered, busted-up-in-just-the-right-way amplifier that let the notes break up just exactly where she intended them.

Heartbreak distorts things in such beautiful ways, she thought, and Star played nothing but heartbreak of the most beautiful kind. Alex drank and drank, and the music got better and better.

Her voice was like her amplifier; worn in just the right ways, it had lived a life. It had been to war, it had loved and lost, it had drunk and wept itself to sleep in a boxcar on the way to Memphis. And when she sang, the words were simple and true:

 _“When I was a young girl, I had a good woman_  
_But you know she was just too damn good for me._  
_So I went to the church, and the preacher said child  
_ _You been choosin’ blindness when you got eyes to see”_

She was tall and raw boned and the muscles in her arms stood out under the red lights. Alex wanted to get her fingers all up in that long dark hair streaked with white. She wanted to know if it came from hard living. Astra, the Tupelo Star, Mississippi Slow Hand, was turning this mid-sized blues club into a damn tent revival and Alex Kryptonite Danvers was suddenly real interested in getting her soul saved tonight.

 

******

 

 

“You’re drunk,” Astra said with a calm, sad smile, brushing off Kryptonite Danvers’ sloppy overtures. She was still hot from the stage lights. “All I want is an ice water and a quiet place to sit.”

But Kryptonite Danvers was undeterred. “I’ve got a trailer, y’know.” She swayed a little. “Plenty quiet.”She leaned in again. “I just wanna make you feel good.” She blinked a moment, thinking about what she’d just watched. “Or bad. Whatever you want.”

Astra shook her head. “You’re drunk. I’m sober. Ten years, matter of fact. It ain’t right.”

The younger woman’s eyes changed, then. They had been drunkenly unfocused, and they still were, but there was something in them that was different. She’d been giving her that half-lidded look of lust that Astra had seen plenty of times on a younger woman, and given in to plenty of those times. But there was something else now. It was just an aching loneliness. “I just wanna… show you things,” she mumbled, struggling suddenly with what she was trying to say.

Astra knew what she meant. Kryptonite Danvers was good. Damn good. But all that flashy playing and showmanship was just burying the soul she was too afraid to bare. And she drank too much for the same reason. Astra had been down that road. It was familiar. Kryptonite Danvers had seen what it was to let yourself be raw and open in front of a crowd, and it was too frightening for her, but she wanted to at least let herself be raw and open with a crowd of one.

Astra sighed. She looked at those nimble fingers, those lonely eyes, that slender little body in a suit that was just about falling off her. “Goddamnit,” she muttered, “I always did have a thing for hard luck cases.”

The younger musician looked at her, not quite comprehending.

Astra nodded at the rear door. “Come on. Let’s go.”

 


End file.
